Wednesday, April 29, 2015

Mobile advertisingis no longer the drag that it once was. YouTube has released reports that have given great information about the growth, popularity, and effectiveness of the ads that run on the platform.

Google has mentioned that more and more brands are advertising on YouTube, which is great, but fewer and fewer people are skipping them.

Some of the reasons, according to Google, is the quality of the creative in the ads. This has helped increase the amount of clicks by 25 percent over the past year. Overall, the amount of brands advertising on YouTube rose 45 percent.

So why are more brands on YouTube ads? Aside from their effectiveness appearing to increase, they have also been cheaper for brands to buy. The cost of an ad on the platform was down 13 percent, which was appealing to brands, not taking their newfound success into account.

Google has made tremendous strides in search quality for smartphones and tablets.

Tuesday, April 21, 2015

Maybe your site is almost ready to go because you have a completely new website designor just a mobile-friendly websiteversion of your current site being created but it was started a bit late. That is fine, you shouldn't be affected too much.

Maybe you were one of the few that was 100 percent prepared and got a mobile-friendly version of your site out well before today. Kudos to you!

Or, maybe you were one of the people who found out way too late and now you are stuck with a site that is not mobile-friendly and nothing in the works. Well, your mobile rankings will be hit. Of course, it is not too late to salvage your mobile search rankings! Email Integraphix, a Chicago SEOagencywith a strong web design teamand see how we can help your site become mobile-friendly, and quickly!

Wednesday, April 15, 2015

Just six days from now, Google's mandate for sites to be mobile-friendly or "be square" will go into effect. This SEOupdate has gone with a different process than previous updates since this update came with an official warning.

Google made the announcement in March saying, "Starting April 21st, we will be expanding our use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal…" As of now, it seems that site rankings will be hit with searches on mobile devices, it is yet to be seen if rankings will be hit on desktop/laptop searches.

The change comes as a result of a major uptick in mobile searches (searche
s done on tablets and smartphones). Sites that are not mobile-friendly are a pain to navigate on those devices and so Google wants to reward the sites that have taken the initiative to be mobile-friendly; on that same not, Google is punishing the sites that are making it difficult for mobile-searchers to view the web.

A major thing to note is that sites must pass a mobile-friendly test, proctored by Google search crawlers. Also, the friendliness is determined at the page level, not site-wide.
Google has been telling web designersand developers to make their sites mobile-responsive for years now but it was more of a suggestion, now, Google is putting its foot down. Its mighty, mighty foot.

Thursday, April 9, 2015

There are lots of myths out there about SEO, some of them have validity, while others are just wrong. Here are some of the worst offenders out there.

Search engine optimizationis a big scam. It is sad but true that many business owners feel this way. They have been sold on SEO by not-so-honest SEO companies; they promise SEO services but deliver no results. If you are paying for SEO and not getting traffic and/or rankings after a few months (maybe not fantastic data, but it's still there) then you have fallen prey to inadequate SEO techniques.

Google can figure out how which URL is the main one. Many website developers and owners like to think that creating many URLs for the same site is a good idea in hopes of having more URLs to rank for. Sure, it sounds like a good idea to have lots of optimized URLs for the same site but it is not! Google will never figure out which is the main one. Your site will suffer because of it.

Google doesn't work for extended periods of time. Some people have this belief because they did SEO, it worked, then it didn't. Just because SEO stopped working perfectly after a period of time doesn't mean it doesn't work for a long time. If it stops working after a while, then something needs to be fixed. Such as…

Link degradation

Old keywords

Outdated content

Your competition is outperforming you

Etc.

Link building doesn't work. The classic, and founding, method of SEO is not dead nor has it ever been. Old-fashioned link building is still liked by search engines and is still a heavyweight in determining your rankings.

SEO and social media marketingare not connected. This is not true at all. They are heavily connected. Your activity on Google+, Twitter, and even Pinterest (somewhat Facebook and others) are monitored by Google and can even rank! Beyond that, the more activity you have on social media, the more exposure you have, the more traffic your site gets, the more SEO does for you.

Don't fall prey to the myths that float around about SEO. If you have questions about SEO, then contact Integraphixand see how our Chicago SEO companycan help your business get noticed on the web!

Google Japan has done something very unique; they launched a Party Horn keyboard See in the video on the top right. What does it do? It lets you type letters by determining how hard you blow.

They also produced a Teddy Ruxpin-esque stuffed Panda that has search capabilities. It is called Google Panda. Get it?

Google Chromelaunched an extension that lets users capture a reaction selfie with whatever content they are viewing.

Google's email service, Gmail, has launched a Smartbox by Inbox by Gmail by Google, that's a mouthful. It is apparently the email inbox that we've been missing all our lives. See the video on the bottom right.